New administration powers for the regulator to protect social housing tenants

Monday 9 July 2018

A new special administration regime which allows the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to deal with insolvent housing associations came me into force on 5th July 2018.

It gives the regulator powers to appoint administrators, setting up a bespoke system of administration – recommended in the aftermath of the Cosmopolitan saga – which will provide greater powers to protect tenants if an association goes bankrupt.

Under a normal administration system the administrator seeks to rescue the organisation, achieve a better outcome for creditors or, in the last resort, sell the company’s assets to make a distribution to creditors. The new administration regime adds a secondary objective to this process, which means the administrator will also seek to keep social housing stock in the regulator sector as part of the process.

It means tenanted stock would likely be sold to another housing provider as opposed to being sold on the open market.